Stolen Voices ✓

August 10th

As I'm lying here

Tears pass down the warmth of my cheeks

I try to avoid thinking of you

And the times my eyes shone with tears

Of joy

-b.m

August 10th:

Elias has only ever witnessed death and grieving once before. He's only ever felt the chill of the light being lost from their eyes, watching as her body slumped in defeat. He watched as his aunt bleed out in front of his young eyes, Luella screams hysterics in his ear. Watched as his world shattered, his heartbeat arresting as her last, shallow breaths were murmured with one word.

Sorry.

Now, as Elias walks into the facility, that same feeling of death encaptures him. The sterile scent of hospital cleaner attacks his nose as the white walls enclose him. Everything is bare, as if the exhilaration of life is sucked out of the hollow people who sulk the halls, their eyes downcasted. Nobody looks him in the eye as nurses in conventional blue scrubs rush by. The light in their eyes faded as if they'd seen too much.

He feels miserable the more he walks these halls. The walls are growing tighter, closing in on him, and he can't escape. His pulse races as he advances down the hall the nurse pointed out to him, all different people staring at him through the glass windows on either side of him. Like prisoners, their palms flat on the glass, their eyes drained of any sort of pleasure.

Everyone in this corridor of the hospital is on suicide watch, people who have nothing left to give and no room to receive. The slow suffering of numbness washes the slate of who they once were.

Elias keeps his head down as his shoes scuff against the white tiled floors, the fluorescent lights overhead wavering. If possible, the hall grows more penetrating the deeper he stumbles, the farther he ventures into nothingness.

Elias has felt this worthless, this tired of fighting. All he can think of is how it could have been him in this hospital had he not had his parents. How some moments grow so dark, Elias thinks of ways to kill himself as comfort. The various ways he could end it, what hurts more, what hurts less. It is his solace. A toxic soothing but one that helps ease his dullness into pain.

He spots her room, the door to her room blank. Some people have designs on their doors, colorless pictures, but a sign of living. Mara's is empty, just a white slat door in the space between.

His hand rests against the exterior before he gets the courage to knock, the force knowing that she may just turn him away. It's been a week of restless nights and hellish nightmares, each ending in a different death. His voice horse with the restrained screams as he stirs awake, his mother rushing into his room to comfort him.

Every euphoria drains when Mara was lost from his life as if her presence had been erased. Elias went to work, he talked to nobody and came home to board up in his room. He had no other friends, no personalities to converse with.

"It's Elias," he whispered against the entrance, leaning all his weight into its friction. As if he believes he could feel her through it, her touch meeting his through the barrier.

"Go away," she responds back, her voice fractured. It is callous, so withdrawn it breaks another piece of Elias as he collapses further into the door. Like he can capture her words.